


Suffer A Sea Change

by MountainRose



Series: Tempest [2]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Blood, Graphic Injury, James "Rhodey" Rhodes & Tony Stark Friendship, M/M, Medical Procedures, merfic, non-binary genders, seahorse!tony
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-17
Updated: 2019-11-21
Packaged: 2021-02-07 20:36:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21464176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MountainRose/pseuds/MountainRose
Summary: Tony escapes from the Rings and finds a Rhodey, but the running doesn't stop there.
Series: Tempest [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/211892
Comments: 15
Kudos: 74





	1. Chapter 1

There was fire behind him and the roaring boom of explosions above. They tore up the surface for almost a mile overhead, murking and darkening the distant sky. Tony’s ears rang, and all he could taste was smoke_._

He clung to the compass, squinting behind the faceplate, pushing east hard and fast while his fuel tank held out. The roar of steam-burst propulsion battered his tail, his spine, until it went through numbness and back out the painful other side. The water scraped at his eyes and hissed in through the faceplate’s mouth almost too fast to breathe. He tasted blood but he couldn’t tell if it was his or Yinsen’s. 

No time to think, though; steering the suit was unfamiliar and the force of the water made even small deviations dangerous. The slipstream smacked him hard in the right flank as his left thruster stuttered alarmingly --water in the fuel line-- and he hauled in the artificial fins on that side to straighten up. The metal screamed and shook as water cavitated in the turbulence, pockets of vacuum forming and snapping closed.

He lost flow cohesion over the roughly hewn dorsal fin and the whole torso began to shake violently. The artificial tailfluke caught the turbulent water and wrenched his tail around until the armor creaked and sheared off in twisted, screaming chunks. The forefins were rigid, crude sheet metal, and he couldn't trim them, or adjust the leading angle, and finally they rattled and snagged in the turbulence. They flexed and hummed under the force until the leather buckle tore free, the left bracer spinning away into the water uselessly and the right trailing on it strap. He careened sideways, pitching towards the seabed. 

“Shit, shitshit--” He hauled on his remaining fins, trying to bring his approach angle up, but something screeched, a weld breaking, and the dorsal fin sheared off. 

The sand was unforgiving. The first impact knocked the breath out of him, his shoulder screaming as it hit the inside of the armor. He skipped, the sand knocking him back up into the water column, then struck again, blasting through the top ridge of the dune and sending sand fountaining up in a cloud.

He ploughed three, four meters down the other side of the dune before his right thruster gave out too and he ground to a halt. 

His ears rang in the sudden silence. 

That was definitely his own blood on his first ragged cough; the rich, fresh crimson of it blurred his vision and mixed with the choking cloud of dust and sand he’d thrown up into the water column. He forced the helmet off with the metal edge of the remaining bracer and coughed the blood out of his lungs. Sharp, stabbing pain in his gills revealed the source. Damn. He got a glove off and arched his gill plate open, running a shaking finger along his gill rakes until a stab of pain revealed a shard of metal embedded in his flesh. He eased it out with a choked cough, _christ, it hurt,_ and flicked it away into the sand. He slumped back and waited for the stabbing, heaving dizziness to fade.

A ribbon of sticky red swirled past his face, spun into coils by each breath and pulled steadily east by the current.

He lay there, staring aimlessly up at the sharp sparkle of sun through the waves, until his breathing slowed. Sea was calm, at least. Quiet. Slowly, the sand sifted back down, dusting over his face and collecting on his eyelashes.

A tiny speck, half buried in the sand would be invisible from above... He had to get up. Anyone in the open water would have feltthe impact; maybe be interested enough to come looking, but Rhodey would be in a chopper. Line-deafened by the thump of the engine.

The ache in his shoulder said nasty things about his rotator cuff as he hauled his yoke off. The wrist bracer clanged against it horribly, but he felt a frisson of horror when he couldn’t feel the sound on his lateral line. He was bang-blind, he couldn’t feel a damn thing about the water around him. Shit.

He coughed out sand, trying to avoid passing it over his gills, and it was tinged red, still. He couldn’t spare the energy to worry about his chest wounds, right then, but it was making his gut clench in fear. 

_Get up_. 

He pulled at the snaps of the rough-edged outer breastplate with fingers that flexed too easily in the wrong directions and burned with each stretch and twist. The powercouples fell away with the muffled _snap_ of a spark, a group of ozone and hydrogen bubbles rising off the contacts and stinging his tongue. He shrugged out of the heavy plate and let it slide away down the dune while he struggled with the buried and crumpled tail sections. The rough articulation was jammed up with sand, leaving him squashed and twisted awkwardly. It took tugging and heaving to get himself free and as his tail ridges came loose, a pair of thick, sculpted scales got left behind. 

“Ow, fucking-goddamn-piece of crap if I wasn’t leaving you in the desert I’d melt you down and turn you into a trash can,” he growled, flinging the leather gauntlets after the breastplate. The chest piece wasn’t damaged, as far as he could tell --his heart was holding steady at the pre-set rhythm-- but his shoulder wasn’t moving like it should and his tail felt sore and crisped from the heat of the thrusters. 

Looking east, across the rolling sand, his heart sank into his stomach. His hands were useless for swimming now and dunes were hard enough to navigate when you had power steering and GPS. _Fuck_. He broke the compass off the useless bracer and stood tall on his tail, which was at least good for that. He gulped for buoyancy, trying to up his blood-gas levels enough for his swimbladder to take the weight of the chestplate. It only partially worked; he wasn’t going to be off the seabed but he made up the rest by kicking with his otherwise out-of-place tail. Open water was a travesty, there should be plants and reefs and... rocks? Houses, foundation cables, _something_ to hold on to. The open, blank space made his ‘line prickle, deaf and blind and stuck out in the open.

He started swimming, pumped up with adrenalin that didn’t do anything anymore, dorsal fin powering him forwards, but he struggled to keep his height. He curled his tail up tight and tried to remember to keep his hands closed; the water slipping between his fingers felt like slime, wrong and slippery and awful on the scabbing wounds. 

He was an ambush predator of donuts and shrimp cocktail, not a swimmer, damn it. Progress was slow, and Tony’s head ached with the jolt each time he hit the seabed. He was leaving a trail of blood-tinted water behind for every predator in a hundred mile radius to follow and there was no cover for just as far. 

The black iron and sand-burnished steel of the wreckage vanished behind the first ridge, and then the ocean really was featureless, stretching out in complete uniformity all around him.

And all he had was a compass. 

* * *

They’d been searching around the network hub JARVIS had tracked Tony’s last ransom video to but they had nothing, no bases, no camps, just the crapped out old villa of an oil baron, abandoned since the start of the war, with a router sending the signal out into the blue. JARVIS had had to do some serious fast-talking to keep Rhodey from finding the first boat back to the states and cutting off_ Stane's _fins until he gave them the location.

The call came in from the VIDAR station on base at midday, finding him in the mess hall, failing to eat his ration pack. With the shockwaves of an enormous explosion guiding them in, Rhodey was hull-up in ten minutes, medic in tow and engines roaring, throwing them out of the water with a violent heave. The chopper smacked back down onto the cattemerans after a long weightless moment, engines reengaging and sending them hurtling across the calm ocean so fast that even the smallest waves smacked the hull like rocks.

Rhodey kept his eyes fixed on the hull cam and hunkered down in the waterblankets on the deck to shelter from the air and roasting sun. His breather mask kept him wet enough to keep his scales from paling in the desiccating heat, but it was a rough trip, and the sun blinding. 

“Brace for drop, Colonel!” called the pilot, as they approached JARVIS’ vector. Rhodey got a fistfull of an unused harness, pressing himself against the deck as they slowed and plunged back into the water with a boom.

Tony should have been heading east, straight shot from the base since it blew and gave away its location. Rhodey was going to search back along that line until he found Tony or found a crater.

They sank down into the water column, engines chugging over from surface to swim, and Rhodey pushed up to the bow to stare tirelessly into the water. Immediately, he was acutely aware of just how much he couldn’t see. The instinct was to stare ahead, along the line they were following, but Tony was... tiny. In this landscape, he’d be a scrap of red fins and cloth, barely different from the dunes. He forced his eyes down, scanning the landscape from port to starboard, straining into any scrap of cover he could see.

With no rock or reef to break up the endless uniform sand, his eyes started playing tricks; that shadow looked like a coiled tail, a shoal of gurnards looked like a head as they went over a ridge. 

Tony’s pale red tail caught his eye an hour later, and it took a long moment for Rhodey to believe what he was seeing. He’d been scrutinising rough patches of sand, and pebble dunes for hints of red and gold for so long enough that mistrusting his eyes had become his first instinct.

But no, that was an Atlantic seahorse alright, black hair and Caucasian on top.

“There! Dive!” Rhodey ordered. The pilot revved the engines and ballast bubbled up and away, dropping them to the seabed. Rhodey didn’t wait for touchdown; he was over the foreshield and heading for Tony before the last of the air left the tanks. There was nothing else in sight, as far as the eye could see and Tony’s head was bowed, fins limp in the water.

“Tony!” 

As a seahorse, Tony was slow at the best of times, more dignified than ah... speedy, but he’d usually try and meet Rhodey half way. Sometimes, Rhodey would even let him have his way-- but even though Tony waved, grinned up through the desert water, he didn’t rise off the top of the dune. 

_ His hands._

Rhodey surged forwards as Tony started to topple, the grin sliding off his face and his arm drifting to his side. He got there just in time to keep him from rolling down the dune, his wake kicking up a plume of sand as he braked hard. The plate over Tony’s chest dragged them both down with its unexpected mass, and Rhodey paddled to compensate until he could gulp enough water to puff out his swimbladder and pick up the slack. 

Under his hands, Tony’s skin was crisp and tight and his breath tasted like blood. He was nearly naked, a metal plate over his left chest held on by straps over his shoulder and around his ribs, and an ill-fitting pant over his privates that was barely hanging on. His tail and ears were pale, the red faded to a dirty yellowish shadow of his usual vibrancy, and there were scales missing, showing the raw flesh underneath. 

“Shit, Tony-- Next time, you ride with me.” Rhodey ordered, pulling Tony to his chest and tilting his head back; a thin stream of red leaked out of his right gill as he sighed in relief.

“Hey, platypus. ‘s good to see you.”

“You too, Tones. You okay?” He didn’t wait for an answer, looking over his shoulder at the chopper. “I need a medic over here!” 

Tony gripped his wrist hard enough to flatten Rhodey's sooty fin against his arm, Tony’s fingers almost ghostly against the black, and his ears pinned back with urgency. “Kill the radio. Don’t let them c-call it in.” 

Rhodey jerked in surprise, eyes going wide; surely Obie wouldn’t have infiltrated the military that far-- no, of course he had, _fucking shit sharkass bastard._ He had agents in the military hiding shipments; of course he’d have guys in the comms infrastructure. “Alright, man, I’ll shut it down before anyone can report anything.” 

Tony’s ears went limp and he nodded and lost his grip on Rhodey’s arm, patting the finwebs idly as his hand slipped free. _His webbing was gone. _Tony’s _hands--_ Rhodey swallowed against bile, trying to keep it together, but he couldn’t stop himself from gripping Tony way too hard. 

The medic was nearly there and Rhodey needed to back off and get a look at the chest plate, but he couldn’t bring himself to let go. Tony’s tail, stiff and rubbed raw on its first coil, unbent and Tony was so out of it that he gripped onto Rhodey with it, the high friction scales rasping between caudal and secondary dorsal, rubbing against Rhodey's line in a way just short of painful. He put up with it like they were drunken teenagers all over again, because there wasn’t a perch for _miles_ and Tony’s eyes were glazing over. 

The medic didn’t say anything, too busy shining a light into Tony’s gills, which made him flinch and pull away. 

“Alright, Tones, let’s get you some fresh water, yeah? You look baked,” Rhodey said, making eye contact with the doc. She looked concerned and displeased by whatever she’d seen but she sure as hell agreed with rehydration and zipped ahead to the chopper with neat strokes of a remora tail. 

“Kill the radio, R-rhodey,” Tony repeated. “Rock ‘n roll killed--”

“--the radio star,” Rhodey finished, when Tony’s breath fizzled out. “God_damn_ it is good to see you.” 

“You have no idea.” Tony was grinning again, eyes closed, and Rhodey tucked him as best he could to his chest and buddy-lifted him to the chopper. Tony didn’t complain once, and even tucked his head against Rhodey’s collarbone to reduce their drag. It was more difficult than it should have been, because Tony was clinging to his tail and Rhodey didn’t want to hurt the abused limb any more, but the medic was at the hatch by the time he got there and they pulled Tony below. 

The cabin was tiny and dark, but the rumble of a desalinator was a welcome relief and they laid Tony down in the flow of fresher water. 

Rhodey had to go, had to leave to control the comms and get them to base before anyone could do anything nefarious. He floated for a second, though, while the medic gently coiled Tony’s tail around a rail at the side of the stretcher, because the plate on Tony's chest was glowing electric blue. Tony’s eyes were sharper, cutting through the gloom and reflecting the hard edge of light from the hatchway. 

“..reactor. Power for a... pacemaker. It’s fine.” 

Rhodey’s heart lurched and dread clawed up his spine. “I’m gonna want schematics for that.” 

Tony waved him away with a pained grimace. “Get JARVIS to make me some, I wanna see ‘em too.”

Rhodey dragged himself away as the engines coughed back into life; he had to put them on lockdown.

* * *

Tony was a cool-water kind of guy; he’d just about been sheltered enough in the caves, but the high salinity had been taking its toll even then, and the trek across open water had been truly punishing. 

The conditioned water of the evac cab was almost enough to drop him flat into unconsciousness once Rhodey was gone, but the medic badgered him awake.

“--Sir? Come on, if you won’t drink, I’ll put in an IV and-- actually, that’s a lie, you need a cannula anyway, but at least try and--” 

Tony roused himself with a deep breath of cold water and shook some of the algae out of his brain. “Yeah, okay... you got scotch? ...fuck... I don’t mean that-- I don’t want--” He babbled, hand fisting on the rail of the stretcher, desperately wanting a drink, but trying to keep his poker chip in mind. “No morphine, don’t... no narcotics.” 

A pair of steely black remora eyes watched him through the gloom for a second, maybe longer, but Tony had to look away first. “Alright, Mr. Stark, naproxen or aspirin?” 

Tony sagged in relief, hands going limp. They still ached, but then, so did everything else. “Naproxen.” 

She nodded, and handed over the litre bag of fresh, sugary water she’d been... holding the whole time? _jheeze._ Tony got it to his mouth, quick as he could, and drank deep. She made him stop halfway, and pressed three pills into his hand. He had to close it very, very carefully, to stop them from washing between his fingers. 

He drank the rest down on top of them. 

“So, pacemaker. You wanna tell me what’s under this?” the medic asked, tapping the chestplate. 

“Classified,” Tony said, panting water over his gills. 

"There's blood on your breath, Mr. Stark. If you've got a punctured lung, I'm gonna need to know about it."

Tony shivered, because yes, he _had_, and Yinsen had had to cut into his chest early on. "Had... lung damage, just after the convoy was hit...healed fine. Gillrake picked up some shrapnel just now --yeah, that hurts--” he said in response to her poking, and shining a light up under the plate. “--in the crash. Who... what do I call you?"

"Janson, range rescue, at your service. I need to listen to your chest. You having trouble filling your lungs?" 

Tony pressed the heel of his hand to his aching head, tucking his ears in close in irritation. “Fuck, I don’t _know,_ but you can’t... can’t take off the plate, my heart’s fucked.”

“Alright. I won't touch it, but you’ve got to tell me what hurts, or so help me, I will strip you naked and see for myself.”

Tony groaned; there were too many little hurts, and big pains, and he was tired and nothing needed _immediate _attention, but she needled him --literally, that was a bag of IV nutrients on the side of the cot-- until he started talking. 

His voice was sore and his head full of wadding and he said more than he’d have liked under the balm of fresh water and painkillers. She took his clothes anyway, when he described the infected shrapnel injuries, but she gave him enough time to get himself under control, and promised to cover him up before Rhodey came back. 

“These are a mess,” she said frankly, looking him in the eye. “It’s half healed, positioning good, but the sutures are too big; it’s gonna scar, it’s gonna be weak. You need a reconstructive surgeon.” 

Tony swallowed against bile once she let him go to prod at the lanced infections. “I know a guy.” 

“Hmph.” She replaced the bandages with something more sophisticated and self-adhesive, then looked him in the eye. “A bearer comes in with pouch damage, I gotta ask, I am _obligated_ to offer, Mr Stark--” 

“No. I wasn’t.” He cut her off before she could finish the sentence. “Write me a test for... dirty-needle diseases, but they never... tried that.” Just thinking about that kind of violation made him feel sick, and on top of the feverish nausea, he was half a syllable away from throwing up his bellyful of electrolytes. 

“Alright, Mr. Stark, deep breaths. You’re secure, here, Rhodes is just up top. You need him?”

Tony shook his head and got himself back together. It hadn’t happened, he was _fine._ He was trembling faintly, the webbing on his forearms fluttering and catching the water, then spilling it again; he clamped them down to stop them telling tales. He blew water out of his gills and it burned over his injured rake, letting out a ribbon of blood.

“Yeah, I see what’s going on. I’ll take a look in a bit, if it’s still bleeding. Just hold still while I rotate your shoulder, and try not to tense up.” She didn’t push on the...other thing and he was grateful that she believed him, because there was only so long a bearer could deny _that_ before it sounded like a lie. She prodded at his shoulder and gave him a chemical cool pack instead, helped him tape it down, and then asked him to turn onto his front for a bit. He obliged, with help, because it was far less vulnerable with his pouch and groin hidden, and he could hold on with both hands. His tail was too stiff and sore to go with the motion easily, and he bit back a groan as he uncurled it. He’d had enough of being adrift without a perch or anchor, but he put up with holding on manually for now; his tail was just too sore to grip with again.

“You can rest now, sir. I’ll dress these, strap you in.” 

He nodded and buried his face in the thin pillow. 

Time drifted, time demarcated by the irregular press of ointment and bandages. The engine thrummed through the body of the chopper, vibrations carried along strut and brace until Tony could feel it through his hands, in the fine bones of his wrist and forefin. He screwed his eyes shut, pressing his forehead against the pillow, because the gentle touch wasn’t Yinsen. There was blood in the water-- 

Tony’s gills flared as he tried to fight the tightening in his chest --familiar sensation-- but the reactor was bright and perfect, the light creeping up his chin and flirting with the coarse fabric of the stretcher. He gritted his teeth against the creeping need to hyperventilate. 

Janson pressed a gloved hand into the small of his back, just below his dorsal fin, and held him to the bed; he hadn’t realised he’d been curling up until the solid pressure flattened him back out again with a throbbing ache of abused muscles. 

“Do you want a sedative? Sleep through the worst of the travel.” 

Tony didn’t. He didn’t know if they were addictive, themselves, but he was already craving release, and if he got a taste of it, maybe he alway--

The chopper reared up. The churning of the propeller bit hard on the water, cutting it into a roar that rattled the walls. The hatch overhead locked down with a smooth clunk, just as a thick gout of air invaded the cabin. 

Tony’s stomach fell out of his tail as the water’s surface appeared in the glass, metallic and hard. He reached for Janson and got her wrist; her forefin folded under his hand and he squeezed in panic. 

“Yes. Now. Rightnow, please--” 

He lost the words on an inhaled stream of water, desperate to keep his lungs full for as long as possible as the air crept down the side of the cabin, shimmering like oil. He clung to the battery, hardhardhard, until the scales creased and bit into his body, but he couldn’t taste the blood because the air was sweeping it away, down between the bars, _plink, plink, splash._

Lethargy swept over him with the sickening feeling of his tail loosening --_he was going to drop it, Yinsen’s hard work, all--_ and held in someone’s hands. Cloth under his back, a soft strap across his chest --_for nothing, have to reseat the magnet, eighteen volts and a barrel of rum-- _and the water whipping past the glass, one continuous blur. 

“There you go, Ja Stark, you’re safe, nice and perched, okay? In through the mouth, out through the gills. In, and out...” 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rescue

With the course set, and radio silence protocols in place, Rhodey clapped the pilot on the shoulder and pulled himself aft, to the hatch. He dropped back into the water head first, already pulling the water mask off his face. He used his hands to turn himself right way up in the cramped space; he had to keep his fins close, or he’d knock them half ragged on the crates of emergency equipment.

Tony was on his back, strapped down with thick, comfortable black bands, with his arms loose in the water and his eyes glazed over so far they looked black. There was a syringe in the IV port, and Janson was counting something off, slow and steady, with her hand on his diaphragm.

“How is he?” he asked, regretting his brash entrance when it was clear Tony was...not doing so well.

“Without seeing some real scans, I can’t tell you much.” She kept up the rhythm with her hand, voice soft enough to put anyone to sleep. “There’s a couple of wires going in under the eighth or ninth rib, hard to tell, and bunch of partially healed surgical incisions over sternum, left chest and abdomen.”

“His pouch is pretty battered, infected, but half cleared up. Whatever this is,” she gestured at the chestplate, “his heartrate is unnaturally level, even for a pacemaker. He needs an EKG and probably surgery.” Her expression made it clear that she could _not_ do that, and Rhodey’s head spun with _how the fuck_ do you-- all he could think of was to evac out to the big hospital in 

Landstuhl, he’d need another transport, an aeroplane, even-- could Tony even __take__ a flight like that?

“His other injuries are from the landing, he’s got nasty saltstroke, and he’s been leaking water across a couple of missing scales for at least three weeks, and from two more as of his jaunt across the desert.” 

“He need a hospital?” 

She shot him a sharp glare, then softened. “Tomorrow at the latest.”

“We’ll see how... what operational security is like.” 

She gestured with the stethoscope bell in a non-committal gesture. 

“What’s with the syringe?”

She looked frustrated and resigned, which was not reassuring. “He panicked. Flushed white. I looked away for a __second__ and he’d gone over to full-blown flashback. His heart-- I don’t know what adrenalin will do to it right now.” 

Rhodey’s heart sank right through the deck. “Alright, doc. You did good. Non-addictive?” 

She prevaricated. “Not chemically. Psychologically?” She shrugged with an apologetic grimace. “He didn’t want morphine, didn’t want this at first either, then changed his mind. It’s a concern?"

“Sober six mon-- nine months, unless they gave him alcohol.” Tony’d been doing so fucking well, Rhodey wasn’t about to assume that he’d been pushed off the wagon just yet. 

“He’s not in withdrawal, Colonel,” she commented, putting her stethoscope back to Tony’s chest. 

“Small mercies.” Rhodey pulled himself towards the harness at the far end of the cabin. This kind of small space was what Tony’s type had evolved for, Rhodey’s tail was next to uselessly crowded. He strapped in and unlocked his phone to start calling in some favors.

The doc kept topping up whatever the yellow stuff in the IV was, and listened to Tony’s heart for almost an hour before she put the stethoscope away and picked up a chart instead.

Mercifully, Tony slept through.

* * *

“So, where to?” Rhodey asked him, once they were safe back on the sea bed. 

Tony was halfway through putting on the emergency kit’s hoodie and used it as an excuse to take a second. The sedative was still lingering, making him slow and thick-headed, but they had to leave the safety of the cabin soon and Rhodey was right; they needed to know what they were gonna do. 

Tony didn’t have a plan, didn’t know the next move and had no idea what Stane would do once he heard about the base going up in flames.

His heart leapt in his chest, leaving him with a swell of nausea and a momentary desperation for a deep breath. He popped his head out of the hood and obliged, long and slow, trying to irrigate his gills without popping open the cut on his rake.

The doctor had called the missed beats ‘irregularities’ and ‘concerning’ and told him that he needed to keep chill until he saw a cardiologist, great, sure, easy. Rhodey had that frown-wrinkle again.

“We get back home, we get the intelligence community up in arms, we blow this whole thing wide open. I don’t know what he’ll try, who he’s still got in his pocket, but it can’t be everyone.” 

“We can do that.” Rhodey nodded, but didn’t look happy. “I actually meant ‘which hospital’.” 

Tony grimaced, working the hoodie over his bruised shoulder and tugging it over the bulk of the reactor and magnet. “Fair. I’m trying not to think about it.” 

He reached around under his left arm to tug at the strap around his ribs. It ached, and he really __really__ hoped he didn’t have to wear the fucking thing much longer.

“No shit. There’s a surgical suite on base,” Rhodey offered, but he didn’t look enthused.

Tony took a steadying breath. Yeah. Okay, on-base medicine, probably not advanced enough, or specialist enough. “I’ll keep for about a week, apparently. We should...” 

“Germany?”

“Yeah. Fucking hell, Rhodey, it’s __Obie__, how do I __do __this without-- __fuck__.” Obie had been his contact guy for the company, swinging landing strips and conference keynotes. Keeping anything hidden from him was going to be a nightmare. Water whistled over his gills and a stab of pain said he’d managed to open up his gill rake again.

“Hey. We’ve got you, Tones. Pep and J can get you whatever docs you need, okay? And Obie... I’m gonna put him in a hole so deep, his farts won’t reach the surface.”

Well that was a delightful image. He shot Rhodey a baleful look, holding his aching gill closed to let it seal up again. A few one-sided breaths and the burn eased. “Great. Very reassuring. Do we even have any proof?”

“I was a bit busy looking for you, Tony.”

“He was careful on video.” Tony shoved his hands into the hoodie’s front pocket, slicking his fins down. At least the finhole up the back was big enough for him, and the pant had finholes at the right height too. That was something he’d missed. “How much did JARVIS find out?” he asked, fiddling with the pocket.

“Location of the nearest node, about fifty miles from the base. The explosion gave us the rest.”

Tony started shaking his head somewhere around “node”, fussing with his nearly-healed fingers inside the pocket. “Great, sure, I get your point, and I am deeply, deeply grateful, Rhodey. But we don’t know what the fuck is going to happen next and I for one would like to make an __educated guess!__” 

“Okay, hey, breathe, Tony,” Rhodey cautioned. Tony curled his lip and tightened his tail on the stretcher. After a second, Rhodey dropped his hands carefully, like he was worried Tony might still go off on one. “Three missing shipments, recently. And a bunch of locked files that-- Tony, show me your hands.” 

Tony flinched, bunching his hands into fists with a stab of horror. He couldn’t lose any more-- He gritted his teeth. This was __Rhodey__, he wasn’t about to-- besides there wasn’t anything left to __take__. He pulled his hands out, and offered them across the cramped space, not looking. 

“You’ve messed ‘em up, man...” Rhodey’s fingers were firm and gentle and tension shuddered back out of Tony’s spine. “Let me just... yeah.” 

Tony took his hands back once the bandages were tied back down. It was comfortable, having them snugged tight over the empty spaces, made his fingers feel almost right, instead of lost, broken things. 

They itched though.

“Three... three shipments. And more hidden in the locked files. No recipient data?” Tony pulled himself towards the hatch, suppressing the memory of the water’s surface rippling just outside it. 

He paused, hand on the latch, then pulled back to put on his hood. Stane would have people all over the place, not all of them would be in on the shipping-to-terrorists business... But they would all report a miraculously returned Tony Stark. Didn’t matter if they were golf buddies or black marketeers; Tony couldn’t risk being seen. 

“None. Not even an exact date. JARVIS apologizes for that, by the way.” 

Tony dismissed that; they’d get the AI a hardline and they’d have the data in no time. What he wouldn’t give to have __any__ line to him right now... “Right. Put on your sad face, sugar-puff. Pretend the mission failed. I’ll--” Tony glanced at his hands, then the night-time water out of the window. “Get to ... where am I going?” 

When he looked up, Rhodey was just shining eyes, and white rims on his fins, the rest of his sooty skin, scales and clothes hidden in the gloom. “Don’t think you can sell that to me, Tones.” 

Tony licked his lips, checked the windows for observers, the corners of the room for cameras, and felt the ominous prickle of his lateral line going into overdrive up his flanks. “I’m stealthy. They won’t feel me move.” 

“Who won't, Tony? Do you know the layout? Are you awake enough to learn right now?” 

Tony flinched away from Rhodey’s bow wave, but held himself still for the following touch on his shoulder. “Fine,” he hissed, head down. “I’m fucking exhausted, get me-- wherever. Just don’t--...” He fell quiet on a long gust of water, taking a deep breath after. “Let’s go.” 

It was humiliating, being pulled through the water like a child, but Rhodey was right, Tony honestly couldn’t have made it the five minutes across the back-water base. The buildings were shitty neutral-buoyancy prefabs, all identical and all but one hostile. The looming shapes, felt by the faint reflections of water pressure, were mostly pitch black, without even the coral-glow to pick out the edges. Lights were on here and there, but Tony shied away, trying to keep his night vision.

Rhodey steered them to a black building, with only a smear of artificial phosphorescence to show where the door was. No porch lights in Afghanistan, but Rhodey didn’t have to find the keyhole; Janson opened the door for them to swim right inside. 

Tony hadn’t seen her since before he woke up, and was surprised to see her here. He looked to Rhodey, but it was too dark to see. 

She felt trustworthy, but so had Obi-- no. That was a lie. Tony hadn’t ever __actually liked__ Stane. Needed, trusted, even. But not liked. He should have paid better attention to his company, kept some kind of tabs on... Any of it. 

The door closed behind them, and the lights went on. Dim, side lighting, the kind that someone getting up in the middle of the night might use. Janson pointed to the couch, which had a rail to cling onto, and Tony pulled himself over and relaxed into it with a sigh. The phone in Janson’s hand turned out to be connected to __Pepper.__

“Tony! Oh my god, you-- you missed so many meetings! Jarvis was so __worried!__” He thought she might be crying, and his lungs seized up.

For a long moment he just... froze. It was incomprehensible, she sounded so __different__, the same, but hoarse and--

“...’lo,” he croaked. She stopped talking, like she was choking on something and he screwed his eyes shut at the ache in his chest. He should get that looked at. 

“How are you, Tony?” she asked, softly. 

“...’m alright. Pretty banged up. Wanna...come home. Is Obie--” His jaw seized up on the name, cutting him off.

“He’s here, I... I grounded the jet, oh my god, Tony, I __grounded the jet__, JARVIS gave me a jump drive and now it won’t fly, I am so sorry. Obie was going to go overseas this morning, so we killed it and when I got in, the medic wanted to speak to me and, I am so happy to hear your __voice, Tony!__” 

Tension drained out of him with every word she spoke, until his eyes burned and his ears were so loose that they drooped down to his shoulders. Breath whooshed out of him in one smooth sigh and he slumped into the couch, letting it take the weight of the chestplate.

“I need.” He had to stop and clench his jaw. “I need a heart doctor. Surgeon. We’re headed to Landstuhl.”

“Of course. I’ll have people meet you at the airstrip in Germany. You just rest, I’ll get it all fixed. Obie’ll be on a jet in... four hours, and the flight takes sixteen, commercial. That’s plenty of time to get to Landstuhl, and you’ll be with your own doctor before Obie has any idea you’re still alive.”

“That's...great, Pep. You’re terrifyingly efficient.” 

“Someone’s got to make up for you. Are you... are you going to be okay?”

Tony couldn’t find the breath to reply, gawping at the sudden vastness of that question. Rhodey’s hand landed on his shoulder, and it should have been comforting, but he could only feel it on either side of the chestplate’s shoulder piece, and it just wasn’t the same. He __wasn’t fine__. It was what he was supposed to say but __it was a lie.__

“Alright, Tones, I got this...” Rhodey took the phone back, murmuring something to the burbling squeaking on the other end. Tony wasn’t listening, but just hearing those voices... He started to laugh, quiet and tight. It hurt, like pulling out an infected stitch; sickly and painful.

“I gotta go, Pep. Use the unsecure mail; Obie will-- right. Got it. I’ll make sure-- no, of course not... Yes. She’ll be traveling as far as the hospital with us. Yes ma’am-- sorry. See you soon.” 

It was just so __ridiculous,__ where was the stone? The bars? The door to the house was locked, but the key was still in the handle. It was so __wrong__. Pepper’s voice didn’t belong here, Rhodey’s voice __didn’t belong here__. His chest hurt, like the chestplate was too small, squeezing down on him with its steel edges, cutting off his breath until all he could manage was tiny wisps of water across his burning gills.

“C’mon, Tone, work with me here...” Rhodey’s hand was on his tail, someone had his wrists, and before he knew it he was bundled around Rhodey like a child, gripping tight to camo canvas and tail between dorsal and caudal fins. The laughter cracked into something harsher and louder and he felt Rhodey flinch under his hands as his grip turned bruising. He tried to let go, but --__his hands are broken, they spill water like blood, or maybe it is blood, black and inky and too, too salty. Too thick, but running out of his hands like sand.__

“Shhhh, sshhh, c’mon... screamin’ gets noticed, man... shhh...” 

Tony bit his tongue until the sharp spike of pain felt like fresh water, waiting for Yinsen to finish with the scissors, so __glad I ground out that nick, but, fucking hell, oh god stopstopstop--__

A sharp taste, icy hot-- __mint.__ He hadn’t tasted mint since- Since the last time he’d seen Rhodey. Morning before the presentation; brush your teeth, you won't want a drink--

__Rhodey.__

His hands went to jelly, the joints aching with the force he’d been exerting, and the ache was different enough to-- he was awake now. He took a big mouthful of minty water, drawing it all the way into his lungs, like a talisman. 

Janson was staring him in the face and holding a tube of toothpaste, a white cloud of stirred up mint drifting away.

“...‘m sorry, what the hell...” Tony couldn’t __quite__ bring himself to uncurl his tail, which left him and Rhodey in a tight pile on the couch. Rhodey was heavy, too, squashing him down like an anchor. His heart was... flat. Inaudible except for the moments it paused and then struck him in the throat. 

He was shaking. 

“You’re alright, you free, you’re with me and you’re never going back, you’re alright.” 

He squeezed Rhodey slightly, nodding through the lingering awful panic. “I’d take a board meeting over this, __fuck me__.” His mind jittered over the names of the board members, their faces-- they had the GMO debate coming up again, he needed-- needed to tell them that he’d changed his mind about rice-- “I’ll ...Obie’s not gonna be there, right? At the quarterly. We’ll-- arr- arrest him. Jail time, for kidnapping. And then no more-- no more fucking around.” 

Rhodey shifted uneasily and looked him in the eye, overflowing with concern. “Tony... what’s the date?”

“I...” He shuddered and resisted the urge to tuck his face under Rhodey’s jacket collar. “...June?” 

“__Jesus.__ No, Tony, It’s August. Seventeenth.” Rhodey’s arms were tight across his shoulders, squeezing him until he had no choice but seek the comfort of tucking in close. “Three months, they had you for three months. The quarterly meeting was four weeks ago.”

Tony shook his head as far as he could, held so tightly. “That’s impossible...”

But Rhodey wouldn’t lie to him. Not like this.

He’d lost a month and a half.

“I thought... I was... sick... It couldn’t have been that long,” he muttered weakly into Rhodey’s shirt, his hands lying limp against the fabric.

“Three months, Tony, we’ve been looking for three months. JARVIS got that video, you and Obie, a month ago, then more last week.” 

“I-- I can’t, right now. I want a __drink__\--” Tony’s head was so loud, and the need to just __shut it up__, __one drink, it’ll be easier, __but he knew that wasn’t right, he didn’t want it, not-- not really. There were reasons to... 

“Go to sleep, Tony, there’s nothing in the building, you’re safe, I’ve got you.”

Tony was so exhausted that the mention of sleep had his eyes drooping longer and heavier. Rhodey’s fingers were heavy on the back of his neck, rubbing away the ache of too much open water. He wasn’t going to relapse; it wasn’t an option, there was nothing to tempt him. He was-- he didn’t feel safe, but he did maybe feel protected. The trembling fell away as tension gave way to exhaustion and he fell asleep.


End file.
